ANALYSIS / Boxer's Back Is Against the Wall / Senator's fate closely tied to Clinton

John Wildermuth, Chronicle Political Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, September 10, 1998

The dark blue van that shuttled Kenneth Starr's report on President Clinton to Capitol Hill yesterday may well have been carrying Senator Barbara Boxer's political future along with it.

Once the contents of Starr's report are made public, Democrats across the country are going to be hard-pressed to talk about anything but the president's sexual escapades. For Boxer, a staunch Clinton backer facing a neck-and-neck re-election campaign against Republican state Treasurer Matt Fong, that could pose some special problems of her own making.

In 1991, Boxer gained national attention when she and six other congresswomen marched over to a closed Senate hearing on the confirmation of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to protest the treatment of Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations. She was also a leader in the effort to see that the harassment allegations against Republican Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon received a public airing.

Her far more restrained response to what she now calls wrongdoing by Clinton immediately sent Republicans on the attack, accusing her of rank hypocrisy.

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"When it comes time (to criticize) Democrats, you have a different standard than for Republican's," Fong said in a debate with Boxer last month. "Barbara, your silence on this issue is deafening."

Boxer argued that her only concern in the Thomas and Packwood cases was to provide the women charging harassment with a forum to be heard. Starr's investigation provided that opportunity in Clinton's case, she said.

That argument hasn't stemmed the flood of questions she gets about Clinton, questions that continue to take the focus off other issues that Boxer believes will be key to her re-election bid.

For Republicans, the Clinton debacle is a heaven-sent chance to deal with Boxer, a feisty, in-your- face liberal who one conservative commentator described as "the political equivalent of fingernails on the chalkboard" for GOP leaders.

If Fong and other California Republicans have their way, Boxer will spend from now until election day answering questions about Clinton's conduct and her response to it. GOP strategists believe that women dismayed by the president's sexual affair will be more likely to pull their support from Boxer.

"Matt Fong wants to talk about saving Social Security, improving schools and lowering taxes, but the fact is that this election will be dominated by the president's immoral conduct," said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Fong's campaign, who sounded delighted by the prospect.

That's not the way Boxer's backers see it.

"Matt Fong's obsession with this issue resembles a 12-year-old boy who sneaks a peek at Playboy and then says he was only looking at the articles," said Roy Behr, a spokesman for Boxer's campaign. "California voters care about issues that are going to directly affect their lives, and Clinton's conduct isn't one of them."

But try as she might, the Greenbrae Democrat has been unable to escape the billowing black clouds rising from the president's belated confession of his sexual affair with a White House intern. Even her personal life, with her daughter married to Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother, pulls her closer to Clinton's decaying orbit.

During the Senate recess last month, Boxer campaigned across California, pounding out her message that the economic boom the state is experiencing can be traced to the work she and Clinton have done since 1992. At each stop, she also condemned the president.

Clinton's credibility "has taken a terrible hit," she told an audience in Hollywood, arguing that the president's conduct "was wrong, unequivocally wrong. It's black and white, there are no shades of gray."

That hasn't been enough to satisfy Republicans anxious for a chance to hamstring Boxer's re-election bid.

"By neglecting to demand immediate accountability from the president, she has shown, in true Boxer fashion, that her hypocrisy has no bounds," said Mike Madrid, political director of the state Republican Party, in a message sent to California political reporters Tuesday. "When it comes to political self-preservation, Barbara Boxer has worked hard to see Clinton's improper relationship swept under the rug."

Even Boxer's harshest statements about Clinton have political echoes surrounding them. At Labor Day speeches in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and again on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, Boxer echoed Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman's characterization of Clinton's behavior as "immoral" and indefensible.

But she also outraged Republicans by questioning the morality of their opposition to gun control, health care reform and campaign finance reform.

"I thought the (Senate) speech was shallow and cynical," said Schmidt, the spokesman for Fong. "In the same breath she had the gall to compare the president's immorality with Republican positions on political issues. It wasn't a principled statement, it was a political speech."

For Boxer, there are no good choices. If she continues to support Clinton, Fong and others will try to lash her fate to Clinton's fading presidency. If she tries to put some distance between herself and the White House, it will be seen as cynical political maneuvering.

Boxer's best hope is that Clinton's troubles are more important to East Coast politicians than they are to everyday voters in California. That view got a boost this week from a Southern California newspaper poll that ranked the president's problems 20th out of 22 issues on a list of the state's most important concerns.

"Probably 99 percent of the people out there believe there is no linkage between the Senate race and the scandal in Washington," said Behr, Boxer's spokesman. "The only ones who do are Fong and the people working for him."

Boxer and California Democrats are going to get a chance to test that belief in the weeks left before the November 3 election.